


Dearest

by RemixConstellation



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 18:26:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16539833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RemixConstellation/pseuds/RemixConstellation
Summary: “Hush dearest, for the King is not dead.” He thinks his mother whispered those words to him once. Pressed her lips to his ears and breathed hot fear into his mind. But he picks up this girl and he carries her in his arms and when he speaks, the words break the night but they are not quiet.





	Dearest

“Hush dearest, it’s time for bed now.” The words break from Merlin’s lips, the only sound in a night far too quiet for mid-summer. They break from his lips and spill red across the cobblestones. Break, and echo against chain mail and rubble. He lifts her, featherlight, and rocks her against his chest.

“Hush dearest, for the King is not dead.” He thinks his mother whispered those words to him once. Pressed her lips to his ears and breathed hot fear into his mind. But he picks up this girl and he carries her in his arms and when he speaks, the words break the night but they are not quiet.

“Hush, dearest. For the moon still hangs low and I’ll save you yet.” He walks. Past the knights and the servants, past a boy not-yet-King. In his arms, he can see the beast-mark on her neck. Her fingers still curve, needle sharp and broken ripped. He presses his lips to hers, and she taste wrong. Like bitter fruits and decay. Her teeth are so dull, for the woman who brought down armies. 

“Hush. Dearest.” Do the skies open? He can’t keep the water from her skin. He doesn’t try, lets rage wash her clean. “I’ll purge sin from their bodies.” Stones give way to dirt give way to grass. A horse breaths behind him and his magic shoves it away. He’s supposed to be more careful, but her skin doesn’t glow beneath the moon. Her eyes are milky pools. 

He walks. Walks and walks and doesn’t stop. He walks right into the lake, washing the day away. Trying, anyway. He walks, and there’s a trail of red-brown behind him. Blood that just won’t quit, long after the heart has stopped. He walks and he is not followed, but he can hear the rage of a boy not-yet-King, the quiet heartbreak of a maybe-one-day-Queen. He walks, and he whispers to her “Hush, dearest,” because her silence is so damn loud it pounds in his ears. 

He strips her of her rags and curses the world that this is the first he ever saw of her naked innocence. He cleans her, bathed her in the customs of her people and his. Of Camelot’s laws and of Roman belief. He baths her in every spice he can summon and prepares her for any god who will have her. “Hush, dearest. Just a moment longer and then you can sleep.”

When the beast has bled from her open veins, he fills them with scented oils. He paints her lips with strawberry juice and weaves her a gown of rowan and lilies and crowns her head in hyacinth and cotton. He closes her eyes, but he hates the pale of her skin. He dips his fingers in the King’s wealth and brushes gold across her cheeks, silver across her lids. “Hush dearest. You’ve never looked better.”

There’s a boat. Did he summon it? Or was it already here? It doesn’t matter. He makes her a bed of moss and he whispers to her of their hidden place.  _ They’ll go _ , he says,  _ to a far away mountain. A small little shack by a loud creak. They’ll go,  _ he whispers,  _ where no one will think to look. Where it’ll always be cold but they’ll have each other for heat.  _ He places her on a bed of moss and he pushes her away. “Hush, dearest. The end is so close.”

Life is just the will to live. And he has so little left. He pushes her away and he pours what’s left of life in his veins into her. He doesn’t pray or hope or wish it’s enough. He knows better than that now. The boat burst into vibrant flame, burning the last traces of good in him. She burns until the early hours of the next evening. When she is just ash, soft fingers brush his cheek. “Hush, my heart,” she whispers to him. “For all will be well.”

He leaves her there, rippling beneath the waves. She hangs about his heart, heavy as a chain. His smile, her grin, greets the not-yet-King and the one-day-Queen and the gaggle of knights who will never know their sin. He greets them and he says nothing and he returns to his work. He greets them as though they have slain a beast, and not a girl. As if her ashes don’t muddy the lake he’ll bath a king in one day. As of her death is not scorched into the wreckage of his heart. “Hush, Freya dearest,” he tells her at night. “They’ll never have to know the truth.” 

He sinks into the bath, sinks until his lungs burn and all he can feel is her around him. 


End file.
